Death in a Sweetshop

The Connection– The day was 16 June 1946. The man in the sweetshop collapsed and died on the spot. There would be no cartoon of this event. But it was not easily forgotten in the sweetshop owner’s family. The man was Gordon Brewster, artist and cartoonist for Independent Newspapers, and the sweetshop owner was my mother. And that is how, when I started off on my family history research in recent years, I determined to check out a few things about Gordon Brewster. Did he actually die in The Gem in Howth village or was he just taken ill there? What sort of an artist was he, and what were his cartoons all about? Who was this man, at all?

The Gem sweetshop is just under the bridge in this photo of a Howth tram, March 1959. NLI ref. ODEA 10/2

First the death cert. I now knew where to find this sort of stuff, and sure enough he died in the shop, just as I had been told (I was just under 2 at the time).

Then the cartoons. A former colleague, Felix M. Larkin, had just written a book on the Shemus cartoons, a collection of which are in the National Library of Ireland. Felix introduced me to Honora Faul, who has charge of the collection of Brewster cartoons in the library. Yes, there is such a collection of his cartoons, the bulk of which span the period 1922-32. We are fortunate that Brewster insisted that the newspapers, mainly the Evening Herald, return his cartoons to him after publication, so there was such a collection in his personal effects.

The Collection– It took me a while to get around to checking out the collection. It wasn’t at the top of my to do list and I only got in to the library just before Christmas. Honora was great. She just let me at it. There are 500 cartoons in the collection, all mounted and boxed. As I was coming at this from scratch I figured that rather than spending time mulling over individual cartoons, I should do the whole sweep at one go and try and get an initial impression of the man. I arrived just after lunchtime and had looked at the last of the 500 just as the room was about to close for the day at 5 p.m.

Insight into the period– For that whole afternoon, I was in another world. I was transported back to the foundation of the State and met the main characters who are now part of our history. I met our former British rulers, whose actions were still so important to us and through whose eyes we still saw much of the outside world. I even met Santa, who in a few weeks’ time was due to again visit a very different world from Brewster’s.

The selection below is a small subset of those that particularly appealed to me. I would like to have included more but there are just so many and they are all good ones. So the choice below is personal and perhaps a little quirky.

What with the Lotto and all that, I had nearly forgotten that great economic pillar of the new State, the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes. This was basically an illegal lottery, or should I say an illegally marketed lottery. While lots of the Irish at home bought tickets, the main focus of the operation was the U.K. and U.S.A., where tickets were surreptitiously sold in vast numbers. The authorities in those countries were not amused.

Relevance to today– But what really blew my mind was the relevance to today of so many of the cartoons. They could have been drawn yesterday.

Sense of humour– This one really made me smile. I’d have laughed were it not for the hush around me as I went through the collection. It is really a beauty – the subtle way he has worked in his signature.

Overview– It was a real privilege to get to go through this collection of cartoons. As I’ve already said, I charged through them to get an overall impression of the man. To do them justice you would need to linger over each one. Don’t forget that they appeared individually in the paper of the day and dealt with issues with which the reader would have been familiar at the time. So they probably were lingered over and deservedly so.

Gordon Brewster’s cartoons have been made available online by the National Library of Ireland so that they can be seen and appreciated worldwide. Maybe someday a book will result? And it is well to remember that this collection is probably only a part of Brewster’s output both as a cartoonist and an artist. There may be a lot more to come. From somewhere…

My thanks to Honora Faul for access to the cartoons and for suggesting this post which Carol Maddock, who runs the blog and tweets the National Library’s path through the undergrowth, acceded to with blessed alacrity.

Gordon Brewster has come even more alive for me since I recently met his daughter, Dolores, and three subsequent generations of Brewsters. Thanks again Honora.

I learned that Gordon had gone out that day from his house in Sutton to the Gem in Howth to buy sweets for the children.

I also found it very touching meeting Dolores, who is a marvellous person. The last time our two families came in contact was when my mother whispered an act of contrition in Gordon’s ear as he lay collapsed on the floor of the shop. I only learned of that aspect of his death very recently from a cousin when I happened, for the first time, to mention Gordon to her.

It was also just recently that I learned of Gordon’s two brothers’ history in WWI in the South Irish Horse Regiment. One of the two, Richard, went missing in the final year of the war and it was some months before it was established that he had been killed and not simply taken prisoner. The uncertaintly must have been a cause of some anguish for the family and I gather that neither Gordon nor his father ever got over Richard’s death. While Richard’s body still lies on the field of battle, he is remembered on the family gravestone in Kilbarrack Cemetery, near Sutton.

I hadn’t realised, until I re-read this blogpost online, that Gordon died on Bloomsday, though that celebration was not invented until the fiftieth anniversary of the actual Bloomsday, and some eight years after Gordon’s death.

Finally, thanks to Carol for turning my original text into the marvellous post above.

It was a fantastic opportunity and a privilege and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Honora had told me that she had met the family when they were over from England on a previous occasion and I asked her if she would ask them if I could contact them to talk about Gordon.

Imagine my surprise when Honora mailed me, told me they were coming over, and would like to meet me.

Dolores was full of stories and she has enthused me to find out more about her father’s art and his family and their wider involvement in journalism and the newspaper industry in Ireland.

I was originally very disappointed in the Wikipedia entry for Gordon and one of my early priorities is to expand it and give him his due place in history (with a link to the collection of course !)

Thanks again to NLI with which my experiences (over 40 years) have always been very positive and rewarding.